We received a call from one of our clients that runs 100% Mac systems on their network.
Apparently, they could not connect to the Internet, send e-mail, or print. Thinking that perhaps there was a problem within the Leopard OS X itself, they did an in-place upgrade to Snow Leopard.
Well, that did not fix the problem. So we received a call.
When we got there, there was no DNS resolution, no ability for the iMac to get anywhere even on the internal peer-to-peer network.
After poking around in the Network Settings, the network adapter was set to pull the iMac's IP address via DHCP and seemed to release and renew without a problem.
At first glance, the DNS field was not empty and the IP address that was in there did not register. It took a minute for the realization to hit: They had the IP address of their own iMac set as the DNS server!
No wonder there was nothing coming in. As soon as we deleted the iMac's IP address and released and renewed the IP the network's own DNS servers showed up and we had connectivity.
The e-mail issue turned out to be some in correct settings in their Mac Mail program while the Ricoh Aficio MP C2050 was another problem altogether.
Out of all of the troubleshooting time spent there, most of it was spent on getting the iMac to reconnect to the copier.
Knowing how an in-place upgrade can kill any already existing drivers we downloaded the newest printer driver set from Ricoh's Web site and installed it. We deleted the two Ricoh printers in the iMac's Printers and reinstalled using the copier's IP address and the correct LPR queues.
Still no joy though.
In the end, we needed to perform essentially what is a ground level reset of the entire printing subsystem in OS X.
This is the Apple KB article that we needed in order to fix the problem:
It is important to note that we were unable to fix the problem by clicking on the "-" sign to remove the printers. We needed to perform the drastic measure in the KB:
Resetting the printing system in Mac OS X 10.5.x
To use the Reset Printing System feature in Mac OS X 10.5.x, follow these steps:
- Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
- Choose Print & Fax from the View menu.
- Control-click on list of printers on the left side of the window, then choose "Reset printing system" from the contextual menu.
- If you don't see a list of printers, Control-click on the text "Click + to add a printer or fax" and select "Reset printing system..."
Once we reset the printing system we were able to install the copier via LPR using its two queues, one for black and white and the other for colour printing.
Written using MarsEdit on the MacBook Pro. This blog post editor looks promising as I know enough HTML to be dangerous. We shall see if it can upload images to Blogger's Picasa Web Albums to clinch the deal.
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book
*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.
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